Act of signification from narratology to semiotics within the scope of interdisciplinary approach (original) (raw)

Tópicos Especiais (EGA 10094): Theories of Narrative

Fundamental problems of theories of narrative. From narrative forms to textual structures: the relationship between history, narrative and narration. The narrative structures: function, action, and narration; the structural principles of myth and narrative forms. The temporal structure of narratives: order, duration, and frequency; the links between understanding and expressing time in narrative forms. The modes of narrative: mimesis and diegesis. The problem of narrative voices: discourse, enunciation, point of view, focalization. Narrative and reality: the crossings between history and fiction. Pragmatic approaches to narrative studies: the active dimension of reception of narrative texts; paradigms of narrative tension (suspense, curiosity, surprise). The different semiotic materials of narrative discourse. Prologue: There is a considerable importance attached to systematic studies of narrative communication in the culture of modern media culture-which is proportional to the misapprehension of its manifestation in our field of study. Firstly, in several theses, books, and articles circulating in spheres of communication research, there are constant references to notions such as "narrative", "narrativity", "narration", but mentioned in such a degree of generality that enables a thought about the precise meaning of these conceptual employments. In that sense, narrative is a keyword articulating issues that are specific to several discursive practices in media universes (thus related to variables that make up the problem of enunciation as an aspect of communicational texts): merged in such a fashion are two topic orders of inquiry that narrative theories had clearly delineated as " narrativity, on one side, and "discourse", on the other. Another general instance of reference to narrative universes is one in which " fabulatory " or " fictional " dimensions of certain processes and products of our field of studies are intuitively assimilated to the very concept of narrative: in these cases, to think of the idea that the " historical " meaning of these practices is defined as a nucleus of narrations (where confusion here occurs between concepts of "narrative" and " history "). We might continue enumerating similar cases indefinitely, but the diagnosis should be clear by now: in most speeches of theories and research in communication studies, the reference to narrative is merely pretextual, at least as regards to conceptual clarity animating theories of narrative: the extensive theoretical corpus of narratology is an item of considerable disdain from media theories – being such a conceptual good something coming from literary studies, epistemology of history, or philosophy of language. Disciplines that had reflected on narrative forms, their internal structures and functioning, the epistemic orders assumed for its actualization in the reader's/beholder's experience, their relationships with mental and historical structures of understanding eventfulness, its diversified manifestations in objects, modes and means, the extent of their genres rules, all these specific aspects of a study of narratives were dissolved in most of its evocation in the name of merely " historical/contextual or discursive/ideological meanings of practices, processes and products of media universes. In this sense, we must recover the centre of a rigorous reflection on the conceptual/ phenomenal status of narrativity and its importance for theories of communication, in a context where understanding these phenomena necessarily passes through the recognition of the legitimacy of a communicational question: what, after all, is narrating something?

Introduction to the Levels of Analysis of the Narrative Text (Narrative Theory, 0)

'Narrative Theory' is an online introduction to classical structuralist narratological analysis. This preliminary section provides an introduction to the notion of level of analysis in narrative, and examines a number of theories bearing on the structure of the fabula (Aristotle, Tomashevsky, Bal) and of the story (Genette), with attention to the dimensions of time, distance, perspective, and to the discursive agency of the narrator.

Theory and Practice: Literary Semiotics and Text Analysis

Current Studies in Foreign Language Education, 2023

Today, all kinds of instructive or artistic texts that contain a specific message, regardless of the field, have emerged through the meaningful sequence of signs. For instance, an anatomy text for the medical sciences, a physics text for the engineering sciences, or a biology text for the natural sciences can be given as examples for the instructive text type. The other type of text appears in the artistic field, which has a robust aesthetic side and requires interpretation. On the other hand, the sub-texts that contribute to forming the central texts in the artistic field are generally narrative and representational texts. Along with the instructive texts produced by verbal and/or nonverbal signs, artistic texts have also become an essential part of the teaching/learning process. Many of the texts are frequently used as supplementary material in language classrooms. Thus, artistic texts make thematic or linguistic achievement and signification processes active and promote the teaching/learning continuum. It is possible to shape the adjuvant process with different theoretical backgrounds, methods, and techniques. One of these theories is semiotics: New ways of thinking, understanding, and interpretation methods have been developed throughout human history. Humans produce meaningful structures and use various methods to comprehend them efficiently. Semiotics has gained importance as one of the study fields that analyzes conditions of sign production and their meanings. It is one of the critical scientific fields of the twenty-first century that attempts to explain the facts and phenomena of different systems belonging to nature and culture. In recent years, semiotics has interacted with different fields of science and daily life thanks to the studies done by semioticians. Thus, the study field has been associated with different disciplines, leading to increased interdisciplinary studies. Therefore, semiotics is a field of science that can signify many systems from social sciences to engineering sciences, from fine arts to natural sciences, from human sciences to everyday life (Kalelioğlu, 2023, pp. 109-110). Semiotics closely relates to all fields of science and paves the way for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies. However, perhaps since there is the investigation of an abstract concept of “meaning” at the core of semiotics, there are not many researchers and practitioners in our country who conduct studies in semiotics and transfer the results of the studies to the in-classroom teaching/learning period. For this reason, one of the key objectives of this study is to propose an applicable methodology on how semiotic theory, techniques, and analysis instruments can be used in research and classroom practice. Since the object of this study is a literary artwork, we placed a short story genre, which is more of a narrative text type, at the center of the investigation. “The Lottery”, written by Shirley Jackson, has been selected for this study. Throughout the study, how meaning is constructed in various semantic layers within the formation process and how each layer is articulated to form the semantic universe of the text by the author of the narrative will be addressed.

Applied Semiotics: Interpretation of Space in Literary Narratives

Essentials of Foreign Language Teacher Education, 2022

It is possible to mention different approaches in narrative analysis. One of them is semiotics theory, which is associated with almost all disciplines as twenty-first-century science. One of the most critical reasons is that the signs and meanings they carry are at the center of the theory’s research object. In general, signs are vital in emerging various scientific fields and transforming these areas into meaningful structures. It is out of the question to talk about the system without signs and the meaning without a system. Every science exists thanks to the logical sequences of signs that support its system’s formation. This system is capable of examining facts and events based on concrete knowledge with its metalanguage and systematic approach. (...)

Narratology as a narrative philosophy

Context and Reflection: Philosophy of the World and Human Being, 2012

The article is dedicated to the phenomenon of narratology as one of the important modern schools of cross-disciplinary character. Having denoted one of the sides of anthropological turn in philosophical studies of the 20th century, narratology is a relative of semiotics, literary studies, mythocritisism, and linguistics. The author thinks that narratology as a general aesthetic discipline is appealed for sorting out the relations between eventful ranges of narrative and narrating, for investigating not only the character of the phenomenon but also its communicative characteristics. The main concept of narratology as a branch of philosophical knowledge is the confirmation of the narrative as a prototype of the epistemological matrix. The current state of narratology makes it possible to talk about formation of a science where the distinctive feature of its cognition object is the presence of the two eventful ranges – referential and discursive. The author considers the history of the science, detaches the periods of literary and humanitarian understanding and perception of narratology as the analysis methodology. The author also considers narrative in the context of rhetorical approach, in the case of eventfulness, chronotopical line-up and focalization.